Dazzling on the Dunes

A Lake Michigan Contemporary compound breathes life into a protected seashore.

By Zachary Chase

Photography by David Kingma & Roger Wade Studios

Merriam Webster defines a “labor of love” as “a labor voluntarily undertaken or performed without consideration of any benefit or reward.”

According to that definition, The Dunes, a 40-acre private lakefront oasis in Montague, Michigan, fails to qualify. Make no mistake; the labor was most certainly there — how else to explain the years of approvals to even get the go-ahead to build in a protected Lake Michigan Critical Dune Area? But so was the reward — how else to explain the rousing, remarkable structure that has redefined coastal development in this idyllic hamlet?